Source: Twitter X

I dunno where disagreeing with this comes from – of course I agree and of course it’s true. My position vs martin is he thinks a small country like the Czech republic can have sovereignty without federation, and federation without largely adhering to natural law.
In other…

I dunno where disagreeing with this comes from – of course I agree and of course it’s true. My position vs martin is he thinks a small country like the Czech republic can have sovereignty without federation, and federation without largely adhering to natural law.
In other words, despite Martin’s anti-libertarian framing he himself is effectively arguing as a national libertarian, making the same mistake individual libertarians do except at national scale – it can’t work.
One needs power to deny all threats to possess sovereignty. Given modern technology, this largely means you need an advanced economy, sufficient prosperity from it, to afford weapons that give you relative sovereignty, and you need a federation to insure it.
And it means you must compromise with the members of your federation in order to retain their insurance (alliance). And that means you are limited or prohibited from doing what makes them walk away from that alliance, or turn against you.
We all live in a stategic equilibrium. We don’t get to pretend we don’t any more than we get to pretend we can evade gravity.
We live with humans who vary in needs and wants. Those humans organize into polities. Those humans usually have the ability to influence that polity even if it means leaving it. So any polity must serve the wants and needs of the humans within it to a sufficient degree that it retains the capacity to persist.
Martin accuses me of anglo optimism and effectively economic progressivism. My view is that evolution is merciless, and it is best to work in her favor. Groups like the amish survive because great powers cherish them out of ancestral appreciation. Otherwise, recidivist groups are crushed either by design or by evolutionary forces.
I don’t make the laws of nature I just describe them, and the costs of varying from them.